The Honey: Our Vision for Catskill Park

2004 marks the 100th anniversary of the Catskill Park — a true treasure of wild mountains, clean waters, and country living — that stretches across New York State’s Ulster, Green, Delaware and Sullivan Counties. Surrounding its many hamlets and small towns are vast sections of wilderness designated forever wild as part of the New York State Forest Preserve. The heart of these public lands is the New York City Watershed, which supplies unfiltered drinking water to over nine million people. Today, the park’s rural communities and natural environment co-exist in a rare and delicate balance of developed and undeveloped lands.

The Friends of Belleayre feel strongly that this area’s fragile partnership of community and wilderness can and must be preserved through the careful coordination of sustainable economic growth with environmental protection. Any attempt to bolster our community’s economy must be clear-sighted enough to avoid destroying the very community it is hoping to strengthen. This means that development needs to be on a scale that is appropriate and sensitive to the unique character of our area. For this reason, we encourage small-scale, organic development in the hamlets that will benefit their existing businesses in a mutually encouraging, inclusive model of economic growth.

Our precious region is valued by tourists and residents precisely because its balance between development and wilderness has been so carefully maintained. Joining the ongoing work of groups such as the Catskill Heritage Alliance, the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, and the Catskill Watershed Corporation, we feel confident that our community’s health, economic and otherwise, can only be improved by development that honors the present day splendor of the Catskills, protects it from wholesale transformation, and ensures that this magnificent park is preserved for the generations to come.